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WHY DO THEY HATE THE JEWS? 197
meaning behind it. The Jews as a group may be powerless,
but the sum of the achievements of their individual members
is everywbere considerable and telling, even though these
achievements were made in the face of obstacles. The forces
dormant in the individual are mobilized, and the individual
himself is stimulated to self·sacrificing effort, by the spirit that
is alive in the group.
Hence the batred of the Jews by those who have reason to
shun popular enlightenment. More than anything else in the
world, they fear the influence of men of intellectual independence.
I see in this the essential cause for the savage hatred of
Jews raging in present.day Germany. To the Nazi group the
Jews are not merely a means for turning the resentment of the
people away from themselves, the oppressors; they see the Jews
as a nonassimilable element that cannot be driven into uncritical
acceptance of dogma, and that, therefore-as long as it
exists at all-threatens their authority because of its insistence
on popular enlightenment of the masses.
Proof that this conception goes to the heart of the matter
is convincingly furnished by the solemn ceremony of the burn·
ing of the books staged by the Nazi regime shortly after its
seizure of power. This act, senseless from a political point of
view, can only be understood as a spontaneous emotional outburst.
For that reason it seems to me more revealing than many
acts of greater purpose and practical importance.
In the field of politics and social science there has grown up
a justified distrust of generalizations pushed too far. When
thought is too greatly dominated by SUcll generalizations, mis·
interpretations of specific sequences of cause and effect readily
occur, doing injustice to the actual multiplicity of events.
Abandonment of generalization, on tl,e other hand, means to
relinquish understanding altogether. For that reason I believe
one may and must risk generalization, as long as one remains
aware of its uncertainty. It is in this spirit tl,at I wish to present
in all modesty my conception of anti·Semitism, considered from
a general point of view.
In political life I see two opposed tendencies at work. locked